The Fable of the Sacrificed Settlers and the Kingdom of Appearances

Once upon a time, in a vast fertile plain, there lived an ancient people who cultivated their land with patience. Their fields stretched as far as the eye could see, and their villages pulsed with work, songs, and rituals passed down through the ages. Nothing was missing, except vigilance against the hunger of a neighboring kingdom, famous for its art of turning conquest into proclaimed virtue. This kingdom did not rely only on the sword: it wielded illusion, far more lethal than its armies.

The conquering kingdom and its first advance

The conquering kingdom, wealthy and powerful, had long cast its eyes on these lands. But it knew that marching with its troops alone would be frowned upon by surrounding realms. Attacking a peaceful people could be justified by no law, human or divine. So its strategists devised a subtler method. They first sent the army, not for a total assault, but to establish a forward camp, a foothold they called a “protection outpost.” Officially, it was not war, but merely “securing the frontier.”

The arrival of the settlers

Once the outpost was established, the conquerors dispatched entire families, whom they called settlers. These families were placed on the newly occupied lands, sometimes right in the middle of the ancient people’s villages, like foreign islands at the heart of a living sea. Strong houses were built for them, roads drawn to connect them back to the conquering capital. Everything was arranged so they were not mere inhabitants but human beacons: visible, permanent proof of the kingdom’s expansion.

The trap closes

The ancient people, anxious, soon realized that these families were not innocent: they were extensions of an occupation project. If nothing was done, their fields and villages would be swallowed forever by these settlers. But the ancient people had no army to match, no fortresses, no renowned cavalry. They resorted to what was left: their own inhabitants rose up and attacked the settlers. Not out of gratuitous cruelty, but because if the families were allowed to remain, all their land would be lost without return.

The moral reversal

This was when the conquering kingdom revealed its mastery of appearances. The settlers, it declared before all neighboring courts, were poor innocents. Families, children, old men and women! How could anyone attack them? What barbarity, what scandal! And with this accusation, it sent its armies against the ancient people, this time on a large scale. For it was necessary, they said, “to protect our settlers whose fundamental rights are under threat.”

The calculated sacrifice

What the neighbors ignored – or pretended to ignore – was that this sacrifice had been foreseen from the beginning. The conquerors’ strategists knew settlers would die. They had even counted these losses in advance, for each drop of blood shed would become a pretext for new conquests. “The barbarians kill our innocents,” they cried, and every attack from the ancient people triggered another military campaign. Wherever settlers had been killed, new settlers were installed, even more numerous than before. The trap was flawless.

Appearance against morality

The powerful kingdoms nearby cried out in indignation: “It is unacceptable to attack civilians!” Yet none of them spoke a word about the fact that these civilians had been deliberately sent into occupied territory. None admitted that their presence was not neutral but a strategic weapon. They preferred to judge the visible act -the attack on families- rather than the structural injustice that had produced it. The appearance of morality erased morality itself.

Endless expansion

And so, the cycle repeated. The army settled further, new settlers arrived, the ancient people resisted, and the conquering kingdom shouted: “See how they massacre innocents!” Then, under the banner of justice, it annexed more land. The neighboring kingdoms, paralyzed by the logic of appearances, said nothing. For to oppose it was to appear as defenders of “barbarians.” Ethics was defeated before it even appeared: no one dared to defend a truth that looked too monstrous in the eyes of all.

The universal illusion

The tragedy became chronic. The ancient people, cornered and dwindling, could no longer act without being condemned. If they resisted, they were called savages. If they did not resist, they disappeared under the weight of colonies. The conquering kingdom advanced endlessly, cloaked in the halo of “protecting innocents.” And the surrounding kingdoms, which could have stopped it, remained silent so as not to tarnish their own moral image. Thus conquest unfolded without an official war, without a declaration of invasion. It advanced under the immaculate banner of proclaimed virtue.

The impossible morality

As villages vanished one after another, a single question echoed in the hearts of a few sages: how can truth survive when appearance is more seductive? For it is easier to applaud the protection of innocents than to denounce the cynical use of innocents as weapons. Humanity, they concluded, is not yet ready to distinguish the true from the false, when the false wears the mask of virtue.

Epilogue

Thus ended the fable of the conquering kingdom and the ancient people. Not with a victory of the just, but with the chilling evidence of a universal law: the appearance of morality always triumphs when it looks more beautiful than morality itself. For men prefer the comforting façade to the brutal diagnosis. And as long as that remains true, justice will never prevail over lies dressed in virtue.

Moral of the fable

He who conquers with settlers needs no lies, for appearances already work in his favor. He who resists needs no truth, for he has already been branded a barbarian. That is why ethics, in this world, is doomed to lose as long as people believe virtue lies in appearance rather than reality.